Tips and guides
Useful Tips *While connected to the internet through wifi, your game will download a shop list from the game servers that will replace the prices of items in the shops. By playing the app in both online and offline modes, it is possible to get certain ponies for bits when they would otherwise cost gems or need to be won from the 25 gem balloon pop. Some differences include; **When offline, the only pony that needs to be won from the balloon pop game is Snails. When online, other ponies will appear to only be unlockable from the balloon pop game (including Trixie and Time Turner). This glitch was corrected with the Hearths Warming Eve update. It now only works for Soarin. **Soarin and Fleetfoot switch prices, so it is possible to get both without using gems by buying one and then going online/offline to buy the other. *In order to finish the main story quest completely, even taking the changing store prices into consideration you will need approximately 2500 gems (2930 before X-mas update) to buy unskippable items and to skip buying more expensive items, so don't bother buying any gems if you want to try and complete the story. These unskippable items include: **Rarity (70 gems (90 gems before X-mas update)) **Clock Tower (340 gems) **Rainbow Dash (90 gems (500 gems before X-mas update)) **Town Hall (600 gems) **Shining Armor (650 gems) **Cadance (650 gems) *(INCOMPLETE) Certain ponies need to be levelled up to 5 stars in order to progress in the game. Focusing on levelling these ponies up early on can save you time later. These ponies include: **Twilight Sparkle **Pinkie Pie **Rainbow Dash **Rarity **Fluttershy **Cherries Jubilee **Royal Guard **DJ Pon-3 *It's not necessary to tap all the bits, etc. that fall out of buildings. If you leave them there they will be collected automatically. *Rocks can be removed from the building field for 1000bits (small rocks) to 16000bits (the giant rocks). Similarly small shrubs can be removed for 200 to 800 bits. *If you tap on any sort of decorations(bought/not bought), there's a chance of one bit falling out. *Usually buildings offer the same bits per hour for the two items it offers, so it may be profitable to spread your ponies out and just build the faster item if you don't mind checking back often. *If your shop employs three ponies it may be more profitable (bits per hour wise) to build the first item instead of the second item (Example: Lemon Stand gives 158 bits for Lemons in 3 minutes with three ponies, and 203 bits for Lemonade in 4 minutes 30 seconds with three ponies. That's 52.667 bits/min for Lemons vs. 45.111 bits/min for Lemonade). **However, the second item appears to have better odds at producing element shards. *Place all of the job buildings as close together as possible, so you don't have to scroll across the map to finish their jobs. *Ponies who live in a house that's already built arrive instantly when purchased. For example, if you already have Sugarcube Corner built (from getting Mrs. Cake) then Pinkie Pie and Mr. Cake will arrive as soon as you unlock them with bits. *(NEEDS MORE DETAIL) When you get Princess Celestia or Princess Luna, you'll notice once in a while that they'll spout out one of each type of shard. It is uncertain what conditions need to be met to make this happen. It is likely set on a timer like shops and gives the shards when the game is active. *Shards of Harmony can be spent at activated Harmony Stones for bits. You get random amounts of bits (even zero bits) for every shard deposited, and speending 100 of them has a chance of getting one gem (three gems for 100 deposited Loyalty Shards). *One can move ponies to a shop that is about to complete it's production cycle to get the third pony bonus, and thus better use available assets when attending to the game. *One can fill his or her "unlocked space" with decorations (ideally wells or dirt paths) to fully mitigate the costs of removing rocks/debris that randomly spawn there during "catastrophes". *(UNTESTED) It may be viable to designate certain areas to be filled with rocks/parasprites during "catastrophies" so that you fill your "rock/parasprite quota" and thus prevent further spawning of them. *Similarly, filling at least one square in all 2x2 areas will prevent parasprites from spawning in your town. You can select a "pile of hay" from the store to find open 2x2 that need to be filled. *One can repeatedly buy and sell wells/fancy bushes for cheap EXP. *One good way of economically exploiting your ponies is to ask this question. "considering my habits, how long are the average intervals between my checkups on the game?" If your answer is every 8 hours, buy the cafe, bowling alley, joke shop. If the answer is every 4 hours, buy a mane salon, toy shop, asparagus stand. But it is generally advised to have 8-hour shops, (due to the need to sleep). *It is best to always have access to a shop that will be continuously working for the duration of any of your absences from the game. (prioritizing the short production cycle shops of course) *If the second item in one of your shop's production cycles is about to finish (30 min), and you fear that you will lose productivity in your absence (240min), it may sometimes be a good idea to switch the production cycle to the first item (180 min) which may will keep your ponies busy continuously during your abscence, and thus gain you more bits. You can then switch to the second item (30 min) when you are at a time where you can tend to the game more often, like when making edits to a wiki (every 10 min). **Process in the production cycle is not lost if you switch to the other item or even stop production in the shop entirely. However, it is lost if you sell the shop. *Judging from the shops graph, Shops can be divided into 5 categories. 1. The attentive (1-4), which demands your continious oversight. 2. The "proper" (15-90) which should be tended too as one does low priority tasks. 3. The stange (240-360) which probably have the worst production timers. 4. The sleepers (360-480) which can be used while sleeping. 5. The non-playing, (720-1200) which should be used by those who really can't play the game. (numbers in parenthansis represent minutes). *When spending gems, it may be best to wait until a sale occurs before spending. *(UNCERTAIN) There may exist a piece of decor in camelot that when sold, will award the player around 200K bits. Technical Stuff / Troubleshooting *Android Users: If your game just pauses (so none of the timers update while you're away) and takes up battery life when you're not playing consider closing it with a task manager type app (or a built in task manager) if you're not playing for a while. For the Nexus 7: press the windows list button, long press on the MLP game and choose "remove from list". *Android Users: If your game is crashing on startup, try turning on Airplane mode. To do this, hold your power button and a menu will pop up. In this menu should be an option for "Airplane mode" click this and it will turn off all wireless connectivity and the game should start. WARNING: When you turn on airplane mode on a phone, you will not be able to recieve phone calls, SMS messages or anything else that requires a cellphone or wireless signal. *Android Users: You turn off your device whilst you are still in the game, you will not save and will reset Exploits 'Money Bushes' Upon entering the recently added Canterlot area you will see all the new items that were placed by the makers. On the far left are two bushes that you are able to sell for 100,000-200,000 bits each. Only these two bushes are sellable whereas all the other ones are not. All the other bushes and decor will instead have a button that places the item in your inventory. 'Quick Money, Elements, and Experience' On any iDevice you can manually set your clock ahead. The game will therefore think it is realtime and will give you the things that will happen in that allotted time. For instance, if you have a bunch of shops you can just skip ahead an hour, get all the money and things that they give, and rinse and repeat. You can also use this trick to skip build or demolish times. Be warned, however, every twenty-four hours new parasprites and demolishable objects are added.